Andy Hargreaves is a professor at the Lynch School of Education at Boston College. He received the Grawemeyer Award in 2015. He and two of his graduate students–Mary Bridget Burns and Shanee Wangia–wrote the following response to an editorial in the Boston Globe defending high-stakes testing.
Hargreaves, Burns, and Wangia said:
Want to improve the quality of American high school graduates? Keep testing them! That’s the recommendation of last weekend’s Boston Globe Editorial: https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/editorials/2015/06/12/moratorium-school-tests-goes-overboard/zVVfrMRHbQO0a0GyK2mhLO/story.html. The editorial blasted a proposed state bill that would implement a three-year hiatus on testing, be it the state test or the PARCC assessment. Citing concerns that the Massachusetts Teachers Association had too much influence on the legislation, and calling it a “blunt instrument” rather than a “well-drafted public policy prescription,” the editorial recommended voting against the bill. The educational performance of Massachusetts is nationally renowned, it said, and its high-stakes tests had been a big contributor to the state’s success. So why abandon them?
Well, it is a bit of a stretch to say that high-stakes testing contributes to high educational performance in Massachusetts or anywhere else for that matter. Massachusetts is certainly a top performer in the US and receives many visitors from all over the world who come to learn from its success. But other New England states perform just as well or almost as well as Massachusetts, yet their approaches to assessment and testing are strikingly different. Let’s look at how two of these other states compare on the well regarded National Assessment for Educational Progress (NAEP) which is not high-stakes (in that it doesn’t have rewards or punishments attached to it), it is applied only to samples of students rather than all of them, and it cannot be manipulated by teaching to the test.
Among all states on the 2013 NAEP, New Hampshire shares top ranking with Massachusetts in 4th Grade reading and math and is just one or two places behind Massachusetts in 8th grade reading and math with a barely perceptible difference of 5 points or less on a scale reaching the high 200s. The only place where such a tiny difference in number of points counts as part of a very large score is in the final minutes of a basketball game!
Essentially, the two states perform at an almost identical level, including on other state-by-state comparisons such as child well-being where they rank first and second respectively. Yet New Hampshire has had a very different and more flexible assessment strategy to that of Massachusetts – using a suite of assessment tools as part of common standards established across Vermont, New Hampshire and Rhode Island.
Meanwhile, over the state line from “Live Free or Die” New Hampshire, the Green Mountain state of Vermont is an equally impressive educational performer. It ranks 2nd– 5th place on different aspects of the NAEP, diverging no more than 6 points from the other two states discussed here. It is also another high scorer on child well-being. Yet, Vermont’s approach to testing is much more cautious and skeptical than that of Massachusetts. Indeed, when the Commissioner of New Hampshire and the Secretaries of Education for Massachusetts and Vermont took the stage together at Boston College last December to debate the reasons for their respective “states of success,” Vermont Secretary of Education Rebecca Holcombe, a staunch opponent of standardized testing, criticized tests for becoming tools with harsh consequences attached, rather than ways to monitor teacher and student progress.
So the Globe Editorial is just plain wrong when it claims that state tests explain high performance in Massachusetts. Neighboring states without this armory of high-stakes assessment have performed equally well. There is high performance with tests and also without them. If we can do well with or without the tests and the consequences that are attached to them, then perhaps we should decide whether we keep them or ditch them on other grounds.
Nearly a million students in Massachusetts take tests like the MCAS or PARCC assessments, at a cost of $29.50-$46 per student. By putting those tests aside, Massachusetts alone could save anywhere from $28-44 million dollars per year. The millions of dollars currently spent on testing could be reallocated instead to supporting teachers more effectively by providing more designated time for them to work together and give feedback on each others’ teaching within the school day, to improve their teaching.
Without the constant concentration on tested subjects, the state could also open up the curriculum beyond the relentless basics of literacy and math to include the artistic, scientific, project-based and out-of-school experiences that are an everyday experience for children of the privileged, but that should be the entitlement of everyone. We could support greater leadership stability in high poverty schools so that these schools can attract great leaders and then keep them. We could stop the revolving door of school leadership in under-performing schools, alleviating the pressure these schools feel to stave off receivership and closure before their work of their leaders has had time to have an impact. Like Canada, Finland, Singapore, and other high performing nations, we could achieve a lot more with far less testing. We can do more. We could do better.
Tests of all kinds can be tools for diagnosis and monitoring in the service of improvement. But they should not be the final say in a student’s academic future or a teacher’s professional career. We can test prudently rather than profligately and get equally strong or even stronger results. That’s not only what high performing countries have learned. It’s also what some of Massachusetts’ immediate neighbors have been doing for years.
Andy Hargreaves, Mary Bridget Burns and Shanee Wangia
Lynch School of Education
Boston College
National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP): Interstate Comparison of 2013 Scores
| NAEP | Vermont (VT) | Massachusetts (MA) | New Hampshire (NH) | Nation (Public) |
| 4th Grade Reading | 228 (5th place) | 232 (1st place) | 232 (1st place) | 221 |
| 4th Grade Math | 248 (4th place) | 253 (1st place) | 253 (1st place) | 241 |
| 8th Grade Reading | 274 (3rd place) | 277 (1st place) | 274 (3rd place) | 266 |
| 8th Grade Math | 295 (2nd place) | 301 (1st place) | 296 (2nd place) | 284 |
http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/subject/publications/stt2013/pdf/2014465MA4.pdf
http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/subject/publications/stt2013/pdf/2014465MA8.pdf
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Or by lack of unions, or by privatization.
Andy Hargreaves, Mary Bridget Burns and Shanee Wangia seem to make an argument against high stakes testing in Massachusetts. But the comparisons provided by them (see table) can also be used to infer that high stakes testing in Massachusetts does no harm as compared to the other states that do not have high stakes testing.
A bit of stretch argument goes both ways.
No harm? Are you out of your mind? Do you have no problem with the enormous loss of instructional time because of testing and test preparation? Do you have no problem with hundreds of millions of dollars being spent, which could have gone to education instead of high stakes testing? Do you have no problem with pushing tiny children to do things that they are not developmentally ready to do? Do you have no problem with the narrowing of the curriculum to just reading and math, and the loss of science, social studies, physical education, and the arts? Are you REALLY that obtuse?
I’ve just answered my own questions.
You need to look at the performance of the Massachusetts students in college to determine if the “enormous loss of instructional time” in high school had been detrimental. Do you have any such proof? Besides what is this unknown “enormous loss of instructional time? And where did you find the hundreds of millions of dollars being spent? Are these quantified by any scholars?
Raj, I assume you have never taught in K-12 schools. If you had, you might be concerned about the amount of time now devoted to pick-a-bubble testing. That is not education. That is dumbing down of education. Whatever time is spent preparing for these tests is a waste of time, and whatever money is spent to pay for them is a waste of money.
Raj. I don’t teach in Massachusetts, but in my state, we can’t use the library (!) or computer labs for nine weeks a year (that’s an entire term) because of the testing. Every student takes a minimum of 20 hours of standardized testing a year. That’s children as young as eight years old. Two full days a year are cut from the high schools just for ACT testing. We’re now being forced to add testing in a lot of other subjects so that teachers can be evaluated on test scores. For social studies alone, that’s eight additional hours of testing. You have no idea what you’re talking about if you don’t think that a lot of time is spent on standardized testing.
Raj, as a teacher with 14 years of experience in urban Title I schools, I know firsthand the negative impact of high-stakes testing on teaching and learning. High-stakes testing places unnecessary pressure on both students and teachers, especially in schools serving marginalized populations. Urban schools typically have a history of under performance, comprise historically disenfranchised students and consequently serve as targets for the restrictive, prescriptive, and hostile school cultures that accompany high-stakes testing and contemporary accountability policies. Additionally, America’s obsession with test scores has resulted in a weak and narrowing curriculum, the deskilling of teachers, teaching to the test, more time and attention being given to the “bubble Kids,” and various acts of what Booher-Jennings termed, “educational triage.”
I dunno, I would think it’s incumbent upon the people wanting schools to spend millions of dollars and tons of hours on these tests to demonstrate that there is actual benefit to the tests, not simply that there is no harm.
Of course that makes sense to people who are sane, but people drunk with power don’t need logic. As we know, it’s not always about what is best for our students. It’s about certain people getting their way. That’s what we’re fighting against.
The harm is in the cost and lost opportunities. If high stakes tests are not having a positive effect or are disproved by counterexample, then the tests are irrelevant. Teachers have been voicing opposition to the tests for quite sometime, but are ignored, disparaged, or dismissed. Some capable lawmakers and parents are coming to realize we have been wasting time and money for no gain. The rest cling to a failing ideology of test and punish. The phrase growing up was “Some people need to spit into the wind before they figure out it is a bad idea” (regional? :-).
Reformers have damaged education and set us back decades when we could have been innovating and moving forward. Reformers will throw up their hands, say “we tried”, blame teachers/parents/students, and walk away into lucrative think tanks, leaving a mess for the rest of us to clean up. So much for accountability.
Okay, let’s stipulate that the test “does no harm.” I don’t think that is true, but let’s stipulate that point.
However, since the test cannot be attributed with having HELPED Massachusetts in any appreciable way compared to its neighbors, and since it is costly, and since it is disruptive to the instructional year, there are still compelling arguments to either eliminate it or reduce it substantially. The argument does not really go both ways because one way consumes time and resources without measurable benefits.
This is terrific.
NO, Lauren, it’s not terrific. “This” is all just mental masturbation as all standardized tests suffer all the falsehoods and errors in the making of, usage of, and dissemination (and discussion) of the results identified by Noel Wilson in his never refuted nor rebutted treatise that shows the COMPLETE INVALIDITY of the educational malpractices that are educational standards and standardized testing. Discussing the results of a COMPLETELY INVALID process can only be described as an onanistic orgasm of insanity having no connection to the real world of truth utterances and discussion leaving one with UTTER NONSENSE.
To understand why read and understand what Noel Wilson has proven about the insanities that are educational standards and standardized testing:
“Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” found at: http://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/article/view/577/700
Brief outline of Wilson’s “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” and some comments of mine. (updated 6/24/13 per Wilson email)
1. A description of a quality can only be partially quantified. Quantity is almost always a very small aspect of quality. It is illogical to judge/assess a whole category only by a part of the whole. The assessment is, by definition, lacking in the sense that “assessments are always of multidimensional qualities. To quantify them as unidimensional quantities (numbers or grades) is to perpetuate a fundamental logical error” (per Wilson). The teaching and learning process falls in the logical realm of aesthetics/qualities of human interactions. In attempting to quantify educational standards and standardized testing the descriptive information about said interactions is inadequate, insufficient and inferior to the point of invalidity and unacceptability.
2. A major epistemological mistake is that we attach, with great importance, the “score” of the student, not only onto the student but also, by extension, the teacher, school and district. Any description of a testing event is only a description of an interaction, that of the student and the testing device at a given time and place. The only correct logical thing that we can attempt to do is to describe that interaction (how accurately or not is a whole other story). That description cannot, by logical thought, be “assigned/attached” to the student as it cannot be a description of the student but the interaction. And this error is probably one of the most egregious “errors” that occur with standardized testing (and even the “grading” of students by a teacher).
3. Wilson identifies four “frames of reference” each with distinct assumptions (epistemological basis) about the assessment process from which the “assessor” views the interactions of the teaching and learning process: the Judge (think college professor who “knows” the students capabilities and grades them accordingly), the General Frame-think standardized testing that claims to have a “scientific” basis, the Specific Frame-think of learning by objective like computer based learning, getting a correct answer before moving on to the next screen, and the Responsive Frame-think of an apprenticeship in a trade or a medical residency program where the learner interacts with the “teacher” with constant feedback. Each category has its own sources of error and more error in the process is caused when the assessor confuses and conflates the categories.
4. Wilson elucidates the notion of “error”: “Error is predicated on a notion of perfection; to allocate error is to imply what is without error; to know error it is necessary to determine what is true. And what is true is determined by what we define as true, theoretically by the assumptions of our epistemology, practically by the events and non-events, the discourses and silences, the world of surfaces and their interactions and interpretations; in short, the practices that permeate the field. . . Error is the uncertainty dimension of the statement; error is the band within which chaos reigns, in which anything can happen. Error comprises all of those eventful circumstances which make the assessment statement less than perfectly precise, the measure less than perfectly accurate, the rank order less than perfectly stable, the standard and its measurement less than absolute, and the communication of its truth less than impeccable.”
In other word all the logical errors involved in the process render any conclusions invalid.
5. The test makers/psychometricians, through all sorts of mathematical machinations attempt to “prove” that these tests (based on standards) are valid-errorless or supposedly at least with minimal error [they aren’t]. Wilson turns the concept of validity on its head and focuses on just how invalid the machinations and the test and results are. He is an advocate for the test taker not the test maker. In doing so he identifies thirteen sources of “error”, any one of which renders the test making/giving/disseminating of results invalid. And a basic logical premise is that once something is shown to be invalid it is just that, invalid, and no amount of “fudging” by the psychometricians/test makers can alleviate that invalidity.
6. Having shown the invalidity, and therefore the unreliability, of the whole process Wilson concludes, rightly so, that any result/information gleaned from the process is “vain and illusory”. In other words start with an invalidity, end with an invalidity (except by sheer chance every once in a while, like a blind and anosmic squirrel who finds the occasional acorn, a result may be “true”) or to put in more mundane terms crap in-crap out.
7. And so what does this all mean? I’ll let Wilson have the second to last word: “So what does a test measure in our world? It measures what the person with the power to pay for the test says it measures. And the person who sets the test will name the test what the person who pays for the test wants the test to be named.”
In other words it attempts to measure “’something’ and we can specify some of the ‘errors’ in that ‘something’ but still don’t know [precisely] what the ‘something’ is.” The whole process harms many students as the social rewards for some are not available to others who “don’t make the grade (sic)” Should American public education have the function of sorting and separating students so that some may receive greater benefits than others, especially considering that the sorting and separating devices, educational standards and standardized testing, are so flawed not only in concept but in execution?
My answer is NO!!!!!
One final note with Wilson channeling Foucault and his concept of subjectivization:
“So the mark [grade/test score] becomes part of the story about yourself and with sufficient repetitions becomes true: true because those who know, those in authority, say it is true; true because the society in which you live legitimates this authority; true because your cultural habitus makes it difficult for you to perceive, conceive and integrate those aspects of your experience that contradict the story; true because in acting out your story, which now includes the mark and its meaning, the social truth that created it is confirmed; true because if your mark is high you are consistently rewarded, so that your voice becomes a voice of authority in the power-knowledge discourses that reproduce the structure that helped to produce you; true because if your mark is low your voice becomes muted and confirms your lower position in the social hierarchy; true finally because that success or failure confirms that mark that implicitly predicted the now self evident consequences. And so the circle is complete.”
In other words students “internalize” what those “marks” (grades/test scores) mean, and since the vast majority of the students have not developed the mental skills to counteract what the “authorities” say, they accept as “natural and normal” that “story/description” of them. Although paradoxical in a sense, the “I’m an “A” student” is almost as harmful as “I’m an ‘F’ student” in hindering students becoming independent, critical and free thinkers. And having independent, critical and free thinkers is a threat to the current socio-economic structure of society.
Duane, I meant that the essay by Hargreaves et al posted above by Dr. Ravitch is terrific. I think you misunderstood.
Lauren,
No, I didn’t misunderstand. What I am saying is that Hargreaves, et al, are using data that is tainted, false, invalid from the git go. Using invalid data to make a statement about anything is, well invalid. So that any of the conclusions drawn are in essence logically meaningless. NAEP is just as invalid as the PARCC or SBAC tests and to use the results to “prove” anything is ludicrous and risible.
Duane, you may not like any standardized testing but right now it is the coin of the realm. If privatizers say they can get higher scores by testing more often, then it is reasonable to me to ask whether they were right
Quite correct, Diane about the coin of the realm aspect. Unfortunately that coin is as counterfeit as a three dollar bill and someone needs to inform folks that it’s worth absolutely nothing and to quit using those coins as eventually that coinage will bankrupt our public education schools all the while harming many students with erroneous “measurements” (sic) of them and their capabilities.
Sorry, but I can’t be any part of that “coin of the realm”. No, not sorry as I will continue to fight this nonsense with that which wins out in the end-the truth.
I really agree with you Duane, but I learned from Alfie Kohn to hit from both directions: “By your own measures (standardized tests), these schools have not improved. And when judging by better criteria, these schools have gotten worse, because now they’re all about raising test scores.”
The advantage of using test scores to debunk their own theories is that you can show them directly, in their own shallow language, that their methods are not working. If charters are supposed to have higher scores, for example, and they don’t, the argument is over and we can move on to a better argument.
I do prefer that we don’t waste too much time and place too much value on the “scores” argument, though. For our own sake, we can’t convince ourselves that the scores mean much of anything.
You are correct teacherbatman and that is Diane’s point also. And I agree.
But we can’t stop there. In order to kill the beast that is the educational malpractices of educational standards and standardized testing one has demonstrate the COMPLETE INVALIDITY of those practices. And that has been done by Wilson.
Thank you Duane, and others, who have shared their thoughts on the validity of any educational high-stakes assessment, be it the PARCC test or NAEP. There is definitely room for improvement with any test. Since this blog post was written in response to a newspaper Op-Ed piece on testing policies in MA, we have focused our remarks on that topic.
I would venture to guess that you would agree that education should help to provide a high-quality of life for these students as well, that they are able to grow into capable and contributing adults.
That, perhaps, is the ultimate question underlying this debate: Would a hiatus from the current testing regimen in MA (and perhaps in other states) allow the public schools to focus their mission on supporting children’s well-being? Or would a hiatus undermine academic success achieved thus far, as measured by tests?
Mary,
Your welcome! To answer your last two questions: No and no.
But it appears your still trapped in the language of the edudeformers as shown by “Or would a hiatus undermine academic success achieved thus far, as measured by tests?”
Academic success is not measured by those tests. There is no measurement. Assessment there i,s as poor and invalid as it is, in a standardized test. “Achievement” focuses exclusively on a supposed end product of the teaching and learning process. I say “supposed” because I do not view the teaching and learning process to have any ending other than the mental incopacitation/death of the individual.
By the way, what is your definition of “academic success”?
Wilson’s argument, at least as reported by you, seems to be more or less armchair theorizing about why tests cannot be valid. This is not a particularly helpful gambit in the real-world debate over how students should be assessed, since it would seem to argue against ANY assessment. That is, the same arguments could be made about the tests and assessments, and also the grades, that high school and college teachers give, and almost everyone involved in the debate is fine with having assessments and report cards of some kind, and most people believe that they do in fact measure SOMETHING.
Eric,
Guaranteed that Wilson’s work is not “armchair theorizing”. Allow Wilson to explain: “As a test maker I worked for the Australian Council for Educational Research for six years.” He was in the belly of the beast. Read his review of the testing bible “Standards for Educati
onal and Psychological Testing” and validity concerns at “A Little Less than Valid: An Essay Review” found at http://www.edrev.info/essays/v10n5.pdf
“This is not a particularly helpful gambit in the real-world debate. . . ”
What to get at, reveal, unmask the fundamental errors and falsehoods involved in the educational malpractices that are educational standards and standardized testing is not “helpful. . . in the real world”? Which “real world” might that be? The one of duendes, illusions, nonsensical thought, through the looking glass into Jabberwockey???
Neither Wilson nor I stated that no assessing or report cards should occur in the teaching and learning process. Assessment is a vital part, the question becomes who does the assessing and in what manner. But the concepts of “measuring” and “grading” are not the same as assessing and that “measurement” is, as Wilson says “vain and illusory”.
And you are correct though in stating that the same errors and falsehoods “could be made about the tests and assessments, and also the grades” because that is a proven fact.
“. . . and most people believe that they do in fact measure SOMETHING.”
Just because most people believe something does not make it right, true and/or a good thing. Let’s see, most people at one time believed the world was flat, that the sun revolved around the earth, that four humors could explain human character, illnesses, etc. . . . ” That’s not much of an argument. As my mom used to say to me when I wanted to do something and I used the excuse “Well everyone is doing it”, “Yeah and if everyone jumped off a cliff, you’d do it too? Well, I’m not letting you do it”.
Eric, Read the whole of Wilson. Reading my summary instead of Wilson’s work is like reading a summary of War and Peace and thinking you have read and understood the novel.
teacherbatman: I agree.
Yes, this is how bad rheephorm is: by it’s own phony and misleading metrics, it can’t measure up. And when better ways of assessing genuine teaching and learning are used, they fail yet again, even more.
That abso-positively needs to be pointed out, again and again.
Consistent failure to achieve even a modicum of success is a large part of the reason why the rheephormsters are now allowing, even encouraging, a little bit of public dissent amongst themselves. Their false promises and dismal performances have reached such epic levels that: 1), even they sense that all things rheephorm are in an epic RaceToTheBottom; and 2), they have to give the appearance that something is somehow changing somewhat about their words and deeds.
But to the informed and vigilant it is simply, to paraphrase the NJ Commissioner of Education, a doubling down on whatevers. Or in plain English: an ever more furious flailing in all directions, burning and churning through people and policies and promises at an ever increasing rate, with the only constant being a few making $tudent $ucce$$ hand over fist at the expense of the many.
Self-correction? Homegrown talent reminds us:
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
Upton Sinclair was on to something.
😎
Massachusetts leads the country in the percentage of population with a college degree.
http://www.census.gov/statab/ranks/rank19.html
This is probably why our students are #1 on the NAEP?
Good point. Those that value education will educate values.
I am glad you pointed this out. Tests such as the SAT are designed to measure what is important to certain Americans. This does not mean that the tests cover what is most needed. Therefore, they seem not to predict college success. And what score is meaningful? Is 900 as good as 1200 on the SAT? Maybe anyone over 700 could be successful (and probably are.).
I compared state test scores between Beverly Hills and Torrance one year when aerospace was still an important industry in L. A. County. More engineers lived in Torrance then. Interestingly, Torrance had higher math scores. Not a scientific observation, but interesting idea to investigate.
My own parents graduated high school, but my best friend had a college educated father. I was always playing catch up. However, because I inherited my college-graduate great aunts’ library and because our small town set up a volunteer library, I read as much as five hours a day. This helped enormously when it came to the PSAT.
When my own son, who never voluntarily read anything, started school, the teachers could not tell if he was slow or gifted because his vocabulary was so high for his age. Easy, he lived with college graduates who were argumentative.
Once when I worked in a pre-school program, I enjoyed an analytic conversation with a five year old and was looking forward to meeting her parents. It turned out the mother was a relatively uneducated young woman who had had to place her daughter in childcare at the age of six months. The centers the child had been in all that time were operated by people with multiple degrees and this girl had been in their care from six a. m. to six p. m. daily for all those years.
The synaptic connections that must be created are enormous when you start out far below the level expected by politicians. Time is essential to reach levels needed for success in most fields. Testing won’t get you there. Early language development, good physical, mental, and emotional health, and safe communities can help.
Sounds like the Boston Globe writes were not exactly independent (understatement).
I hope they printed your communication.
The Boston Globe was once a great newspaper – now it’s all little more than drivel.
It is a bit of a stretch to use NAEP scores to show that “it is a bit of a stretch to say that high-stakes testing contributes to high educational performance in Massachusetts or anywhere else for that matter. ”
…unless one first defines “high educational performance” as “high state average scores on NAEP”
…in which case everything is just fine 🙂
“Test to the Top (TTTT)”
(also known as “The Billionaire’s T Party”)
“The measure of success
Is score on standard test”
Said William Gates
Who did quite great
On SAT, no less
Yes, the value of testing is often “proven” in rather circular terms. Tests are good because they raise test scores.
It’s called
“Möbius Proof”
Möbius proof is all the rage
Make a loop from cutup page
Bend the proof back o’er with glue
That will surely prove it’s true
Standardized tests offer minimal benefits to students and teachers, and, when misused, can offer a great deal of harm to both. The problem with the tests is that they offer global information at the end of the year at the end of the academic year. Without item analysis, standardized tests yield little useful information. The testing machine in this country is out of control and wastes valuable education dollars when those education dollars would be better spent in other ways. $28 to $44 million dollars a year would buy Massachusetts a lot of books.
“We’re so proud of our little data point. You’re going to make some rich plutocrat so happy!”
A talk given by Andy Goldstein to the School Board of Palm Beach County, FL about our School District’s (and our state’s and country’s) obsession with high-stakes standardized testing. June 16, 2015.
Andy,
That was excellent — and hilarious.
“We’re so proud of our little data point!”
ha ha ha ha!
Sounds like it came right out of a Dr. Seuss book.
Based on the cheers in the background, you have quite a following.
Keep up the great work! (in the classroom too!)
Your students are lucky to have you as a teacher.
Thanks so much, SomeDAM Poet, I appreciate it.
As usual, excellent commentary Andy! TAGO!
Look at the totally impassive front on the faces of the board members as you were talking. What they were silently thinking, “there’s that Goldstein character again, okay he’s done, I can start to listen now”. Their ability to tune out is amazingly rude and shows a complete lack of concern for the concerns and input of the constituents of the district.
Thanks and keep at it and at them, Andy! Were there to be more brave folks like you!
90% of New Hampshire’s public school students are white and 27% qualify for a free or reduced-price lunch; in Vermont, those numbers are 92 and 36 percent, respectively. Neither state contains extensive urban populations or areas of hypersegregation.
Massachusetts’s public school students are 64% white, 18% Latino, 9% black, and 6% Asian; 37% qualify for a free lunch. Most of those Latino and black students are living in areas of concentrated segregation; per a 2013 report by the Civil Rights Project at UCLA, the state is home to some of the most segregated public schools in the US, particularly in the Boston and Springfield regions (white flight is ongoing in the latter).
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/17/us/school-poverty-study-southern-education-foundation.html
As Diane has written in several books and in many shorter articles and blog posts, NAEP is the gold standard of measuring educational progress. It is a fair, well-constructed test—there are no gimmicks or plausible distractors—that is impossible to prep for. NAEP scores also must be disaggregated to make sure that we are comparing students with similar characteristics. In eighth math scores (picked at random), the gap between MA and the others is much bigger than the aggregated scores would indicate—MA whites outscore VT whites by 11 and NH whites by 10; MA blacks outscore VT blacks by 19 (NH black numbers are suppressed); MA Hispanics outscore NH Hispanics by 7 (VT Hispanic numbers are suppressed); and MA Asians outscore VT Asians by 11 (NH Asian numbers are suppressed). 10 points of NAEP is understood to be roughly equivalent to a grade level’s worth of learning.
Even if all of the other observations that the authors make about Massachusetts schools are true, it just isn’t accurate to say that kids in all three states score similarly on NAEP. Massachusetts’s kids are doing more than just a little bit better.
“NAEP is the gold standard of measuring educational progress.”
Horse manure. There is no “gold standard of measuring educational progress.” Nothing is being measured by the NAEP. There is no construct validity in the NAEP process. Some things may be being assessed (and poorly at that) but they are not identified. If so please show me where there is an attempt to describe those things that are being assessed, what the agreed upon “standard” which is used to measure the construct and then the measuring device itself. Counting correct answers on a standardized test is not measuring anything by any stretch of the word measure-it’s counting and counting isn’t measuring.
“It is a fair, well-constructed test. . . ”
The oxymoronic thought that a standardized test is “well-constructed” is nonsense. Wilson has proven just how COMPLETELY INVALID that educational malpractice is (see my comment above). “Well-constructed” = COMPLETELY INVALID???? I don’t think so, not in any realm of rationo-logical thought
Tim, you make some points worth noting.
Though there is an obvious “urban bias” that privileges discussions of poverty in urban areas and its impact on education, poverty is slightly more widespread in rural areas both nationally and internationally, though this does not appear to be the case in New England. You make the point that most Black and Latino students live in areas of “concentrated segregation.” It is important to note that this is also the case in rural areas. As someone rightly stated, “If you’ve seen one rural place, you’ve seen one rural place.” All are different and many rural areas are segregated by race.
http://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/rural-economy-population/rural-poverty-well-being/poverty-overview.aspx
http://scholars.unh.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1158&context=carsey
Regarding your stats on the demographics of the three high performing states, VT and NH have significantly more Whites than MA, and though MA has a larger percentage of students who qualify for free and reduced priced lunch, an indicator of poverty, there are obviously more underprivileged Whites in VT and NH based on these figures. Yes, it is true that most interstate comparisons of scores by subgroups indicate a MA advantage; however, this advantage is explained when socioeconomic status is taken into account. A parallel comparison of scores by poverty reveals less than a two-point difference in most cases and a NH or VT advantage in some instances.
Click to access 2014465MA4.pdf
Click to access 2014465VT4.pdf
Click to access 2014465NH4.pdf
Shaneé,
Thanks for the reply.
I didn’t intend to imply that the small number of blacks and Latinos living in VT and NH aren’t segregated by residence. However, since they are so few in number, it is likely that for the most part they share the same social and educational institutions as whites. In MA, the effect of concentrated segregated minority communities and neighborhoods is worsened by isolation, namely in the form of apartheid schools.
As for poverty, I thought it would be simplest to focus on the number of children who are eligible for free or reduced-price lunch (26% NH, 36% VT, and 37% MA) rather than get into an analysis of the effects of rural vs. urban poverty, although that would be an interesting discussion.
Finally, the FRPL-eligible scores you provided in your links need to be further disaggregated–when they are, they again show that Massachusetts is doing considerably better. There weren’t enough black and Latino test takers in VT and NH to allow for a full apples-to-apples comparison, so here is the data for FRPL-eligible white students in all three states (there are many poor whites living in both urban and rural areas of MA; while they are not concentrated and isolated to the same degree as MA’s blacks and Latinos, they are also not likely to live in MA’s wealthiest and highest-scoring communities):
4th Grade Math: MA 245, NH 242, VT 238
4th Grade Reading: MA 223, NH, 219, VT 214
8th Grade Math: MA 290, NH 283, VT 281
8th Grade Reading: MA 270, NH 263, VT 262
It’s also interesting to note that VT ($16,377) is spending far more per student than MA ($14,515) and NH ($13,721).
I am just a public school parent living in New York City, so I have no idea whether MA is overtesting and what conditions are like in its classrooms as opposed to VT or NH. But again, I think you will need to look someplace else other than NAEP scores to support your points. Disaggregated figures show a wide and consistent advantage across nearly every single subgroup.
Wonder if there might be a correlation between Massachusetts having some of the most expensive cities to live in and results of standardized tests???
There are undoubtedly all sorts of “correlations” that one could come up with that are just as “meaningful” as the (supposed) one between high stakes testing and scores on NAEP.
The problem is that once you start following the Yellow Brick Load of statistics (as Gary Rubenstein has called it), it’s hard to tell what is real and what is not.
Witches, flying monkeys, cowardly lions, scarecrows without brains and Wizards start popping up all over the place– and only some of them are real (Michelle Rhee and Arne Duncan, for example)
A week ago, there was a longer than 7 hour hearing at the MA State House on the topic of testing. Hundreds turned out to testify on the harm caused to our public schools by the testing obsession. There were so many that it was moved to a large auditorium to accomodate the crowd. It was part of a week of action by several groups to push back against the destruction of our public school system. Parents, students, teachers, school administrators and school superintendents testified.
The Globe reported thusly:
https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2015/06/11/lawmakers-hear-arguments-for-changing-standardized-test-policies/lYqzbdaaQZHPLz3ADwwXbL/story.html
For a not-so-corporate take, here’s a different report:
https://digboston.com/mcas-holes-mass-ed-reform-heavyweights-condescend-on-beacon-hill/
There are 12 members of the State Board of Education. One of them is a student. Three have actually been teachers in a classroom. Most of the other eight could be most accurately described as eduvestors rather than educators. Not surprising that we have the proscriptions for education that we do.
MA BESE
http://www.doe.mass.edu/boe/edboard.html
This is about ownership. Massachusetts teachers helped created and owned the curriculum frameworks. We knew that is wasn’t all about curriculum but instruction was equally important. We worked collaboratively to understand the Frameworks. We had the time and motivation. We were respected partners.
What is being required is so counter to the the process that we experienced with the Frameworks process. What is happening in Special Education modifications alone is unbelievable. This bill would give everyone breathing room.